


Black and Blue

by NeverNiamh



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The First Avenger, Drafted to the army, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Canon, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverNiamh/pseuds/NeverNiamh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky’s uniform felt like a death-trap in his fingers. Didn't they understand? Bucky was already in a war, in Steve’s war....he didn't need to be taken out of it; he was the only Solider still left in the cause. </p><p>James Buchanan Barnes was a solider. He always had been, since the age of eleven on a playground in Brooklyn. </p><p>Steve Rogers was a ninety-pounds-of-nothing with the mind of solider. But he'd never be one. </p><p>A story of how the the war and society work together to tear them apart, and bring them back together again, and how it changes them as it goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black and Blue

**Author's Note:**

> A/N - These characters do not belong to me, I’m just borrowing them for a short period of time to lay out my story before your eyes. I promise to give them back soon (maybe)
> 
> Pairing – Steve Rogers (captain America) and Bucky Barnes (The Winter Solider, James Buchannan Barnes) (Stucky)
> 
> Reviews and comments are always nice if you have the time, whether they be positive or constructive criticism, but otherwise, please just enjoy my work. This was kind of based off this tumblr post:
> 
> http://marvelmeta.tumblr.com/post/92415667720/sergeantbuckybear-im-not-over-this-idea-of
> 
> And the song Bad News by Bastille, but I added my own little twists and turns. First feature length Fanfic I’ve tried, hopefully it will turn out okay. Set before and during CA-TFA (Captain America The First Avenger)

**Black and Blue**

_Bad news like a sucker punch what do you say?_

_Don’t turn your back on me,_

_Don’t bury your head deep,_

_Just ‘cos you don’t know what to say,_

_Bad News,_

_Oh It beats you Black and Blue before you see it coming,_

-          _Bad News, Bastille_

 

On the day that James Buchanan Barnes was drafted the rising sun spilled blood across the skyline as it rose, red stained fingertips reaching out malevolently to taint first innocent wisps of white, clear cloud.

It should have been a day just like any other. A day of swallowing away the guilt on his way down to the garage when his eyes caught the bright red lettering:  _Your country needs YOU_ standing out above the crowds of people; forcing himself to shake his head and walk right on by the recruitment centre, ignoring it as if it just didn’t exist. A day of working his ass off so Steve didn’t have to, because lord only knew that kid didn’t need to work in his condition. A day of half-heartedly flirting with the dames that walked by the street out front, their warm eyes shinning as they caught a look at him, their petite scarlet bow lips framing giggles a little too loud whenever Bucky said something even if it wasn’t remotely amusing, batting eyelids. It should have been a day of coming home at the end of it all, kicking off his shoes, and moving to sit down next to his stupid-ass best friend, who probably wouldn’t have even noticed Bucky walking in, would probably have been far to engrossed in whatever he was drawing that day to even say hi. Or, more likely, Bucky coming home to find his stupid-ass best friend trying to clean up the wounds he’d got from back alley fights he couldn’t ever conceivably have won, blood trickling from whatever limb he’d managed to break as he insisted he was fine.

Either way the day should not have begun with a letter from his local recruitment centre, telling him to come down and receive his uniform, and that he’d be leaving for England in three days.

Neither should it have continued with them refusing him when he’d gone down and tried to insist he stayed, “you don’t understand, sir, I got a kid I gotta look after, fucking thin as a stick sir, more things wrong with ‘im  than you can count on one hand, this kids got a terminal case of stupidity and I gotta be here to look after him.”

It certainly shouldn’t have included the officer turning him down, a disapproving, frown on his face as he told him _James_ – Bucky hated it when people called him that, it made him feel ten years old - was crying out like he was some dame for her husband, and that he needed to make sure he was here on Sunday eleven o’clock sharp.

And it shouldn’t have ended with his keys slotting easily into the front door of the tiny leaky-roofed apartment he shared with his Ninety-Pounds-When-Soaking-Wet best Friend Steve Rogers, the uniform clutched tightly in his trembling hands.

The door swung open easily, Bucky doubted he’d actually need the key to get in sometimes, the door seemed so weak. It couldn’t keep anything out. Couldn’t keep out the cold, or robbers, couldn’t keep out the war, couldn’t shelter them from the reality of this new world.

The apartment is small as well; barely enough room for two beds and a kitchen. Bucky hates it. He always has, ever since they moved in when Steve’s mum finally cracked. It’s not good enough to keep the cold away from Steve in the winter months, when his tiny frame is shivering and shaking. Steve insists it’s cozy, but Bucky’s not sure if he’s saying that because he knows they can’t afford any better, mainly because it’s two men on one income and the occasional money that Steve’s artwork can gain them.

It’s strange, because Bucky really did never like it, but as he walks through the door, he really thinks he might break when he can’t sleep here anymore, that he’ll miss it more than should be humanely possible.

Or maybe it’s just the little bundle of fragile limbs and blonde hair curled up on the couch, tapping a pencil against a half formed image of a solider jumping from the page, that he’s fretting about; and not the damn house that’s just a little shy of living on the streets.

“I can’t get this right,” Steve’s muttering under his breath. Bucky almost laughs because that’s just how he feels. He can’t get this right. He tried to fix it, but he couldn’t, he can’t go over and fight in the war because he has Steve’s wars to fight for him, but he can’t stay because the law is dictating he goes.

“Maybe you should pack in your art work, kid, obviously you’ll never be able to draw anything again,” and he’s surprised at how steady his voice seems to have come out. No hiccups or anything, it’s not thick with emotion, no underlying current of anguish. It’s just a few words, slung together to make a sentence. A teasing sentence as well. That should gain him some points in this stupid game he was calling his life.

“Don’t call me kid, Jerk,” his eyes look up and Bucky has to swallow noting the black eye blotching up his face, the small cut just below those lips of his. He doesn’t mention that they weren’t there that morning. He doesn’t ask who did it. They’d gotten past that point. There’s the slight hardening of Bucky’s jaw, the guilty look in Steve’s bright blue eyes but other than that it is ignored. At least for now.

It really hits it home though; looking at Steve’s bruised face. He'd never really realised how _weak_ Steve was until just then, his body looked so frail,  like if you touched it, it could crumble beneath your finger tips and float away like ash on the wind.

Bucky’s uniform felt like a death-trap in his fingers. Didn't they understand? Bucky was already in a war, in Steve’s war....he didn't need to be taken out of it; he was the only Solider still left in the cause.

He shoved the fabric behind his back before Steve could get a good look at them.

“Punk,” if the words filled with more emotion, a little more of the adoration he feels for the man with a body that never matched his spirit then Steve doesn’t mention it, but his eyes dart as if he could look behind Bucky’s back from his position on the couch.

“You okay? You been out awfully long Buck,” he comments, dropping Bucky’s eyes to look back down at his drawing, and part of Bucky wants to force him to look back, so he could see the hues of those eyes stretching out like the ocean that would soon separate them. That was a funny thought, he didn’t think he’d ever been further away from Steve Rogers than the width of the city. He’s always been just down the road, on the other side of the playground, just up that tree.

“Yeah, course,” Bucky lies, even though he shouldn’t. He should place the uniform on the coffee table he’d managed to pull out of the junk yard when they’d first got the place and explain anything, but he doesn’t. Instead he plasters on a fake smile, “not all of us can sleep around on the couch all day, some of us actually have to work.” He regrets his words when they fall flat.

“Sorry,” Steve mutters and Bucky uses the heavy air as an excuse to get away. His fingers aren’t shaking as he opens the door to the bedroom he shares with Steve. There are two beds, of course, on opposite ends of the room. Steve’s is neat, not an inch out of place, like he’s never slept in it. Bucky’s is a mess, covers slung in untidy heaps. When it comes down to it, Steve was always the man built for the army; his brain was wired that way even if his body wasn’t. Bucky was the other way round. Sometimes he thinks that if there was a way to push them together, his Body, Steve’s mind, that they’d be the perfect human being.

He stares down at his uniform, the wadded up pieces of clothing in his palms already felt as heavy as a damn riffle. The thought crosses his mind to lay them out neatly on the bed, like most of the guys did. As if they were something to be proud of. But he didn’t want to be proud of them. He didn’t even want to look at them, didn't want to be anywhere near that sickly colour that he'd probably die in, the green clouded with an added dreadful dark red would be the sealing of his fate. 

It wasn't like he was even that scared, he reminds himself, he'd never been scared of dying, not really. Hell, if Steve didn't exist he'd probably have signed up to the army voluntarily. But....he hadn't been able to. He had to look after Steve. What was Steve going to do when he got in a fight his damn pride wouldn’t let him run away from? What was Steve going to do when his lungs gave up on him and someone had to get his to the hospital? What was Steve going to do when winter rolled round, the cruel cold freezing over the apartment, no Bucky to be there to lie next to him in bed and share body heat like it was some kind of drug, Steve’s body to weak to battle the cold on its own? Who was going to be there?

Answer: No one. And it killed him. It’d probably kill Steve to.

They’d always been a pair, since they were ten years old. They had this way of revolving around each other, like they weren’t actually two people but one. They’d somehow managed to build up a land around each other. A whole world, or at least Bucky did. Steve’s like another limb, an extension of him. Being separated was going to hurt just as much as he imagined being separated from his right arm might.

He shoves the uniform in the back of the closest and tries to shove his thoughts to the back of his mind. It doesn’t work.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice makes him jump. It’s coming from behind the door, which means that Steve’s managed to pull himself away from his drawing. He’s probably worried about Bucky. Bucky doesn’t blame him. He’d be worried about Steve if their places were reversed. Plus Steve had this way, this way of knowing things before Bucky said them, even if all he knew was just the formidable sense that something was wrong, “Do you want dinner? I made some of my ma’s onion soup again, if you’re interested.”

It should probably be his brain he listens to as he leaves the room, pulling the door open to look down at Steve – was he always that small? – his mind explaining all the reasons why he loved Steve’s cooking, even if it was just basic, and giving him the low down on that it knew about army food and how god awful it would be. But he doesn’t think he has it in him to eat right now, so he just shakes his head, which causes Steve’s frown to deepen.

“Buck….”

“We should talk,” Bucky’s words are quiet, but he knows they piece through Steve’s whole being by the way his eyes go all serious, he stands up straighter as if trying to push himself to meet Bucky’s height.

“Talk about what….” When Bucky gives him a look like he might not fully understand the English Steve shoves his shoulder slightly, “come on, Barnes, spill the beans.”

Bucky still doesn’t speak. The silence wraps around them. He doesn’t want to tell Steve. It will make it more real. And he certainly doesn’t want to tell Steve stood in a doorway. But it doesn’t seem like the fates are lining up to what he wants today.

Turns out he doesn’t have to tell him anyway.

“You enlisted.”

Steve’s always been too smart for his own good; it’s one of the ways he makes up for that weak body. And he was good at reading people known as James Buchanan Barnes. So it wasn’t really a surprise that he added two and two together. It was a little surprising he’d added two and two and gotten five though. Because he should know that Bucky would never damn well enlist. Never. Because it’s Steve. And he wouldn’t ever leave that kid behind.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been expecting it for a while.” Steve’s voice is abnormally quieter than it usually is, almost matching his body but not quite – he didn’t think that’d ever happen. That Steve would match the body he’d been wrongly assigned at birth, “It’s not like you could just stick around to look after me, right?”

Bucky wants to say that yes. Of course he could. He could stick around, look after little Stevie, fight his war instead of something happening far away, overseas.

“Say something,” Steve was staring at him now. And yes, okay, Bucky forced his mind to work, forced the words to come out of his mouth.

“I enlisted.”

He wants to say he was drafted, that he’d never leave, not ever. But....he couldn’t. The words got stuck in his throat. What difference did it make anyway? Either way, he was off overseas and he probably wouldn’t come back. Either way there was no stopping it. It was just the difference between whether it was Bucky’s choice, or the governments. “I’m sorry Stevie.”

Breath. Halting on the air. A million words he wanted to say, falling down into a hole. Those blue eyes, for a moment, were all he could see, all he could hear, all he could feel. Their gaze on him. Bucky Swallowed hard. He felt his mind commit them to memory, the blues, the hints of silver and green, the little jewels that made up Steve’s iris’s. The little jewels that made up Bucky’s world. He’d take them over all the Ruby’s or Diamonds or gold he could get this hands on any day. And then, all of a sudden, they were gone.  Steve was gone, as if he’d just vanished, as if he’d never been there at all.

“Stevie?”

“I’m fine.” The voice came from the kitchen, and it didn’t sound fine. But he didn’t suppose that his own voice sounded fine either. “I’m making dinner.”

It took the sound ten times as long to reach Bucky’s ears. The door banging shut. He didn’t realise until he felt the cold wind blowing on his face and heard the sound of the city around him that he’d been the one to leave through it.

///

If you look hard enough, every single alley in Brooklyn had a memory in its dark crevices that could be linked to Steven Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. Maybe it wasn’t obvious if you just walked down one, time clearing away all evidence of any sort of stand off, but Bucky could see all the evidence of the fights that had happened in them, even fights that had happened years ago, with merely a glance. He could tell you exactly what had happened on that day, exactly how they’d dealt with it, and the words he’d handed to Steve afterwards.

They’d left their mark all over the city, every place they could link with an incident, an accident, something. Bucky didn’t want to see it right now. He didn’t want to see the world that him and Steve had built together, the world he was leaving.

It was also the only thing he wanted to see.

He should be back at the apartment. He should be memorising Steve’s face, counting the colours of his eyes. But he was here instead. He wasn’t sure why. Some back Alley. August the Third 1935. Bucky had started this fight for once.

_“What did you just say about him?” Bucky’s voice was hard, his eyes a blaze with fire of an anger that burned right the way through him, right the way to his soul._

_“I said that the little git was a waist of air, for all the good he brought to this world.” The monster – the thing – that dared to pick on Steven Rogers spit out. The man was slightly drunk. He hadn’t seen the punch coming to him before it was too late._

_“He’s ten times the man that you’ll ever be. And he’s mine, understand? You try and say anything about him again and I’ll kill you. He’s_ mine.” _Whisky was hot on his breathe as he spoke the words in a surprisingly even tone._

_Mine._

_Steve dragged him away. “We only fight for justice Buck.” He said as he pushed Steve out of the alley._

_“What about_  your _justice, Steve! You Stick up for everyone else, you’d die for anyone else. What about you! Jerks like him, it’s_ them _that don’t deserve the air they breathe.”_

_“Let’s just go home.”_

_“Don’t you dare tell me you believe what he said.”_

_“Let’s go home.”_

_“Screw you, Rogers! You don’t know shit. You’re amazing.”_

_“Let’s go home.”_

_“I wish you’d see yourself how I see you.”_

_“Shut it Buck. We’re going home. You’re drunk.”_

Bucky could still feel his fist connecting with that mans jaw. He could feel exactly how it happened. That was the problem with Steve. He stood up for everyone but himself. He needed someone else to do that for him. He needed Bucky to do that for him.

Bucky didn’t cry. Because soldiers don’t cry.

That was what he was now.

That’s what he’d always been, since he was eleven years old on the school playground.

He was a solider and he would die as one, miles away from what he was fighting for.

///

In an apartment in Brooklyn, with a leaky roof and a door that wouldn’t keep out the cold, wouldn’t keep out the robbers or the war, there was a ninety-pounds-when-soaking-wet nobody sat at the kitchen table, his eyes were staring at two bowls of soup. They were both cold.

His flatmate had left a few hours earlier after telling the boy that he had enlisted for the army.  He wasn’t sure if his flatmate would come home.

Green fabric was in his fingers. He’d found it at the back of a wardrobe. For some reason it already reeked of death.

Five select tears fell from his face as he wrote up his own recruitment letter.

They were inseparable. On the school field. On the streets.

They’d be inseparable on the battle field as well. If he could find someone who’d take him. This nobody with more things wrong with him than you could count on one hand. There had to be somebody, somebody who’d give him a chance.

James Buchanan Barnes would not die alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Loads more to come, I promise. I'll be taking Steve and Bucky right up until that moment of the train and maybe even beyond. 
> 
> I feel like this was really detached, and a little crap, but hopefully it wasn't too bad. Please let me know if you have a few moments to review.


End file.
